New and improved Joomla compatible discuss bot (4.1 beta 5 released 11-14-05)

[chadness]

Now all is well again and I can use the bot. Thanks for your efforts!

Thanks for the feedback!

And I have a question, is it possible to get the whole article in the forumpost as well? I don't want no cutoff.

The easiest way is to set the number of characters extremely high - there's nothing built in to do this.  I'll think about adding that....

[chadness]

torkil - thanks for all of the additions and suggestions!  The overflow: hidden might not be a bad thing to have as a default.

[fj0]

Now all is well again and I can use the bot. Thanks for your efforts!

Thanks for the feedback!

And I have a question, is it possible to get the whole article in the forumpost as well? I don't want no cutoff.

The easiest way is to set the number of characters extremely high - there's nothing built in to do this.  I'll think about adding that....

I already tried that it doesn't work!

[torkil]

Are you sure the article is not longer than the forums setting for maximum length on posts? I believe there is a forum setting that allows you to set a limit to the length of posts, and if you article is above that limit it might get cut.

Once you have found the max allowed postsize in your forum settings, try pasting your article into Mircosoft Word for instance (or any other program with a character counter) and find the size of the article to compare it to your limit.

Hope that helps.

[fj0]

Are you sure the article is not longer than the forums setting for maximum length on posts? I believe there is a forum setting that allows you to set a limit to the length of posts, and if you article is above that limit it might get cut.

Once you have found the max allowed postsize in your forum settings, try pasting your article into Mircosoft Word for instance (or any other program with a character counter) and find the size of the article to compare it to your limit.

Hope that helps.

I just tried doesn't help.

[chadness]

What do you have it set for, and what does it get cut off at?

[torkil]

Another suggestion:

If nobody has written any replies to an article then the discussion link will show "Article discussion (0)". But if you click that button, you automatically create a discussion for that article where you are the topic starter.

I suggest that IF the discussion hasn't been started yet and you click on "Article discussion (0)", then you get a Javascript alert saying:
"No posts have been made in this discussion yet. Do you want to create the first post? Yes/No" (Text should be configurable)

That way, users are made aware of the fact that the topic will be created if you press yes, instead of the topic just being autocreated.

[chadness]

Easy enough to code in as an option.  I should get to this in the next couple of days.  Started integrating the other stuff you had suggested.  The profile link will be SEF enabled.  The CSS classes will be configurable, but will use the old values as defaults.  I haven't touched the date/time part yet.

[torkil]

Great! Excellent

[kac]

I have a question about the option that says "Do you want discussion links to show on the front page?".

If I set this to "Yes" then the  {mos_smf_discuss:Board Name} is inserted for EVERY article on the front page. 

How can I set it so that  {mos_smf_discuss:Board Name}  is only displayed on the front page of items where I manually entered " {mos_smf_discuss:Board Name} "?

In otherwords, on the front page, I want it off by default and turned on only when I manually put in the bot command "{mos_smf_discuss:Board Name}".

Is that possible and I'm missing something?

[chadness]

That option doesn't really affect whether or not it is posting a default discussion link, just whether or not you are allowed to have discussion link on the front page at all.  To turn off default discussions, leave the field for "Default discussion board" blank, though this will affect the individual content items as well.

Though, thinking about it, having that option only affect default discussion links might be a better way to do it, since if you are manually putting them in, if you don't want them to show up on the front page, you just don't insert the link in the intro area.  I'll look in to that.

[kac]

Thanks, I had already figured it out.  What I did was make the Default Discussion Board "no_discussion".  When I left the Default Discussion Board blank, the actual text "{mos_smf_discuss:General Discussion}" showed up in the front article where I had manually enabled the bot.  "no discussion" had to be used.

I do have another question though.

I'm also using the akocomment component.

After installing this discuss bot, the article doesn't format well.

I'd like this discuss bot "Discuss this in Forum" link to show directly under the akocomment "Write comment here" link.

Right now, they show up directly next to eachother with akocomment justified left and the discuss bot justified right.....which does not look good on smaller width templates.

Is there an easy way to fix/change this?

[chadness]

Thanks, I had already figured it out.  What I did was make the Default Discussion Board "no_discussion".  When I left the Default Discussion Board blank, the actual text "{mos_smf_discuss:General Discussion}" showed up in the front article where I had manually enabled the bot.  "no discussion" had to be used.

Yes, there's no way to use the code at all if you have that set to no, so that's a good workaround.

I do have another question though.

I'm also using the akocomment component.

After installing this discuss bot, the article doesn't format well.

I'd like this discuss bot "Discuss this in Forum" link to show directly under the akocomment "Write comment here" link.

Right now, they show up directly next to eachother with akocomment justified left and the discuss bot justified right.....which does not look good on smaller width templates.

Is there an easy way to fix/change this?

I'm not sure off hand.  I'll download akocomment and fiddle with it, see if there's anything easy to be done.  Isn't it somewhat confusing having two discussions?

[kac]

Isn't it somewhat confusing having two discussions?

I agree with you but most of the users of the website are not PC or forum savy so when I disabled akocomment, those users that are not familiar with forums had a fit.  I had a ton of emails complaining.  Therefore, I need to use both.  I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks. 

[chadness]

I hear you

[kac]

I think I can figure out a way.  I can add a "<b />" command at the end of the akocomment code to add a line break.  This will put the discuss bot link one line under the akocomment link....which is good.   Now I need to figure out how to get the discuss boy link to justify left. 

Is there an easy way to do that?

[chadness]

Very easy - In the second to the last line of smf.discussbot.php, the part that controls that is:

Code Select Expand

link_pos{ float: right; }
Just change the right to left.

[kac]

ok, that worked great!

Now, one more thing to make it sync up with akocomment.

Right now my discussbot link comes up as "(0) Discuss this in forum".

How can I change it to "Discuss this in forum (0 posts)".

THANKS FOR THE QUICK RESPONSES!

[chadness]

Find two instances of this:

Code Select Expand

(0) '.$link_text.'
and change it to this:

Code Select Expand

'.$link_text.' (0 posts)

Find four instances of this:

Code Select Expand

('.$replies.') '.$link_text.'
and change it to this:

Code Select Expand

'.$link_text.' ('.$replies.' posts)

If you're feeling really crazy, you can put in an option for if there is only 1 post, so it's not always "posts", but I'm running short on time. 

[kac]

Thanks a lot!  Looks/works great.